Lifestyle Changes Essay, Research Paper

My Lifestyle Changes Paper will include the six components of wellness, that being Physical, Emotional, Intellectual, Spiritual, Interpersonal and Environmental wellness. It will include my goals, my weaknesses as well as my strengths to the components of wellness as well as a plan for myself to manage all of these components. The paper will also include anticipated changes in my lifestyle that may challenge the individual components of wellness and how I plan to deal with these changes.

The first component of wellness that I?ll discuss in that of Physical wellness, which requires eating well, exercising, avoiding harmful habits, responsible decision making, learning about and recognizing sicknesses and diseases, keeping regular medical and such checkups along with preventing injuries along with other physical characteristics of your body. My goals for Physical wellness are to live a healthy and active lifestyle. In order to do this I must improve on some of my weaknesses in this area, which are eating unhealthy foods. I must also learn to make some decisions that I make more responsible, as well as learning more about diseases and how I can prevent them from happening. Another key fault of mine is that I drink alcohol, it may be just a college phase, but in order to be completely physically healthy I must learn to cut down on my consumption of alcohol. Despite my weaknesses I do have many strengths in this area, some are exercising regularly which I have always tried to find time to do. Trying to be selective in my eating habits and eating as much healthy food as possible. Another strength is I am motivated and care about my physical appearance and how I treat my body and want to look. My plan to improve on my Physical wellness by continuing living an active lifestyle and exercising regularly. Also to try to step things up a notch for that of my strengths, continue doing the good things that I have been doing. I?d also like to improve greatly upon my weaknesses, by trying to be much more selective in my eating habits, trying to avoid late night snacking and eating foods low in fat and unhealthy substances. Another key thing for improving my Physical wellness is to cut down dramatically in my drinking of alcohol, which I plan on doing. I?d also like to become aware of diseases and injuries that I have a higher risk of attaining and do the things necessary to preventing these things. Along with that are some simple things that I can do to increase my Physical wellness, such as my driving habits to slow down my speeds, along with taking other safety precautions in things that I do. Basically just thinking about what it is I?m about to do, and making some responsible decisions for the good of my Physical wellness.

Emotional wellness, which is optimism, trust, self-esteem, self-acceptance, self control, satisfying relationships and the ability to control my emotions and express them openly and properly. Emotional wellness to means a lot to me to be stable with myself and the relationships amongst my friends and family. My goals are to maintain steady relationships with those I?m associated with and always keep a positive frame of mind for myself to be happy. As well as to be at one with myself and expressing my emotions openly. My weaknesses as far as Emotional wellness are very little the one thing that I do not always do is express my emotions and what I?m actually feeling openly with others. My strengths are that I have very high self-esteem as well as self-confidence. I accept myself for who I am and that is all that I can ask of myself. I have very satisfying relationships with both my family and friends. I also do a lot of thinking and exploring of myself, to think about things going on in my life and how I?d like to deal with them. I plan to manage my Emotional wellness better by trying to be more open about my feelings and thoughts with others. I?d like to be able to sit down and talk about my problems if I have any with any one I know, that?s how open and emotionally stable I?d like to become. Rather than just letting things sit inside me not knowing what?s to come of my thoughts and feelings built up inside. This is a very positive aspect of my life, but you can always improve on anything and I?d like to on my openness to others as I have talked about above.

Intellectual wellness is being open to new ideas, the ability to think and question critically, motivation to fulfill new skills, sense of humor, creativity as well as having curiosity. My goals for intellectual wellness are to keep my mind constantly learning and never be satisfied with what I have learned. My weaknesses for Intellectual wellness are also very few, the one thing that I think really stands out from the list is creativeness. Which also may have some things to do with thinking critically. My strengths are that I?m a very open minded person always willing to try and experience something new. I have a great motivation and determination inside of me that makes me want to perfect whatever it is I?m doing at the time whatever it may be. My sense of humor is also very key, I couldn?t live without having humor and laughing, its just one of the greatest things about live to make someone smile or smiling yourself. I also find myself curios about new things asking questions and researching about things I don?t know something about, constantly trying to learn more and more all of the time. My goals as far as Intellectual wellness go to keep on doing what I have been for the positives and to always keep an open mind no matter what the situation may be. As far as improving I can try to be more creative my just trying new things, thinking about things seriously and really trying hard to do different things each time could improve my creativeness.

Spiritual wellness is the ability to have guiding beliefs, principles or values that give you a purpose in life. It involves love, compassion, forgiveness, altruism, joy and fulfillment. My weaknesses are in this category are that I?m a college student and I don?t have to time that?d I?d like to greater explore my Spiritual wellness. I?d like to be more involved with my family and experience more of the things Intellectual wellness has to do with them. As well as church, I?d love to become an active member in my church once again. My strengths are that I do know that I have a person in life and would like to fulfill that purpose for the good. I also have love all around me, from friends and family. I?m very happy where I am and what I?m doing with my life. I also do pray every night and believe in God and I want to go to heaven. I know what it is to be compassionate to others as well as when I?m receiving it as well as that of forgiving others for their wrong doing and receiving it from them when I do wrong. My goals for improving my Intellectual wellness are that to try and spend more time with my family to spread and receive the love, compassion and joy as well as all the things that come in Intellectual Wellness that they have to offer. Once I am done with college and on my own again I also plan on becoming an active member in a church in my area and attending. Although I?m very happy in my life right now, I think with the church it just can make everything more meaningful and really help you realize your purpose in life.

Interpersonal and Social wellness is the ability to have satisfying relationships, both physical and emotionally. It involves good communication skills, developing intimacy, support networks such as family and friends. My goals for this are to keep steady and good relationships with those around me and to always be involved in someway with my loved ones. My weaknesses in this category are very few, the one thing I feel I don?t do well is show my intimacy and love enough to my family and friends who surround me. My strengths in the category are many every relationship that I have every had I?d have to say had been a good and satisfying one and I remain on good terms with all my family and friends. I feel they are both physically and emotionally stable, I?m so close with so many people and have so much trust in them and feel as if I could tell anyone of my family members or friends anything I felt like. Knowing they?d be caring and supportive in my decision or wrongdoing. Which brings me to the next strength which is communication, that I feel is the key to developing long lasting interpersonal and social relationships with your family and friends. You have to talk about things and get them out amongst your family and friends to keep a good relationship going. The support of my family and friends has also always been there and likewise for my self for them, I know that anything I do or they do we will be rooting for one another until the end, which is a great thing. It really makes you feel good about yourself to know that you have everyone on your side there for you. The things that I could work on to improve with showing my intimacy and love for my family and friends, I?d have to try and develop even tighter relationships than we already have which could be tough to do. I think just as far as always being there for them and telling them that you love them and care about them, are things I can do to assure those around me of my intimacy and love for them. So I plan on trying to be close and always be positive and encourage my loved ones and tell them how much they really mean to me, thus improving my Interpersonal and Social wellness.

Last is Environmental wellness, which is that to benefit our planet from your doing as well and keeping healthy due to the effect of our environment. My goals for Environmental wellness is to greatly improve my awareness as well as my wellness in it more than I am right now, not to just benefit myself but the future of our world. My weaknesses as far as Environmental wellness starts off with and obvious one recycling, which I don?t do. Another major one if driving everywhere as a single passenger of a car, which pollutes the air. Another harmful thing that comes from the environment is its ultraviolet rays that I don?t always protect myself from. Another thing that I don?t do but am harmed from as well as the air is breathing in second hand smoke. Now onto my strengths for Environmental wellness which is by far my weakest category. I do recycle when its provided but not on my own is one positive. Another positive is that I don?t smoke nor do I encourage smoking to those around me. Littering is also that I?m really against and have participated in Adopt a Highway Program numerous times. I also don?t participate in violence in society I?m against fighting, and often talked other out of it. My plan to fix my weaknesses are to become much more aware of the environmental factors that I can contribute to, for helping our world a better place. I?d like to get recycle bins around my house and begin recycling all the products accordingly. I?d also like to car pool to cut the rush hour traffic down in Minneapolis, and more importantly to help prevent the air pollution in the environment. I?d also like to protect myself from the ultraviolet rays of the sun more often while lounging in it, by using sun block of the proper SPF to lower my risk of skin cancer. I?d also like to cut down on my hanging out in places where there are high amounts of second hand smoke and just be wiser in my decisions to where I want to go and take an alternate place without smoke floating about in the air. These are the things I?d like to do to raise my level of awareness and of contributing to my Environmental wellness.

Now I will be talking about some anticipated changes that will most likely occur in my life, and which of the six components of the wellness I think I will be affected in by these changes. The first change that will occur that I?m going to talk about is aging. I think that the greatest challenge that everyone will come about will be aging and its toll on your Physical wellness. The challenge to try and stay physically healthy, as you get older it only gets more challenging. You must really watch what you eat, and go to the doctor more often for regular checkups on your health and most of all try to keep active and try and treat your injuries and sicknesses quickly so they don?t take a toll on you. Aging I feel may as well take some amount of challenge on your Emotional wellness, being that were all so used to being young and healthy. That for many it may be difficult to stay positive and keep your mind thinking you can make it through this tough stage of aging. Aging may also take some challenge to overcome the Intellectual wellness, by growing old you forget things, and seem that you?ve seen it all. So you must keep that desire to learn to keep on tact of your Intellectual wellness and continue to be open and learn and grow as you age. Changes in a job may also be a challenge that you may come across in your time, I think this could really affect your Emotional wellness, especially if you don?t like the change. We must learn to accept changes and learn to stay positive and take things as they come about to us. Intellectual challenges also we will all come about, not being in school anymore and feeling as if we know it all from our experiences. We must constantly continue to learn, you can never know too much. So we must keep open to new things and challenges that we come about and keep a positive frame of mind when these challenges may come about our lives.

In order to adapt to the lifestyle changes that we may come about, we must be motivated for the changes and set goals to overcome your weaknesses and make changes for the good, and keep all the components of wellness in mind in doing so

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